France Telecom’s plans to undergo a restructuring of the organization seems to have gone horribly wrong. The move has resulted in a spate of suicides over the last 18 months.

On Friday a 32 year old female employee of the company leapt to her death. She had just come out of a meeting to discuss the reorganization of the customer services department where she worked. Two days earlier a 48 year old employee stabbed himself after learning that his job would be scrapped.

There have been 23 suicides in the last 18 months committed by the company’s employees.

France Telecom is undergoing a massive exercise to reorganize the firm. The firm has over 100,000 subscribers.

Taking a serious note of the spate of suicides, the French Government has asked France Telecom’s CEO, Didier Lombard to meet Labour Minister Xavier Darcos. The Finance Minister Ms. Christine Lagarde has also asked the company to hold board meeting.

The company says that it has already started talks and moves to stop such mishappenings. "Managers were given a clear message to quickly organise local meetings to explain what happened and what's being done, and to make sure that if there are problems they can be discussed," says a company spokesman. It has now suspended the restructuring exercise till October and has appointed 100 HR professionals to help employees reduce the stress.

The workers’ union says that the restructuring exercise is eventually resulting in increased stress for the employees as there is fear that some might lose their jobs while others may be transferred to different departments.

Other unions too have come in support of the worker’s union and have blamed the company for the tragedies.